Ex-Goldman Sachs lawyer told panel that Epstein made her firm ‘millions’ of dollars

Former White House counsel Kathy Ruemmler told the House Oversight Committee that referrals by Jeffrey Epstein made her law firm “single-digit millions” of dollars, according to a transcript released Wednesday, providing lawmakers with another example of how the convicted sex offender used his relationships with the wealthy and powerful to benefit his associates.

Ruemmler, who never represented Epstein in any formal capacity but frequently provided him with legal and public relations advice, appeared July 15 in a closed-door session with the panel as part of its ongoing probe of the government’s handling of the investigations into Epstein.

Ruemmler said Epstein sought her legal advice from time to time “as many people do” and defended her relationship with Epstein as strictly professional — but acknowledged that Epstein helped her secure work with French banker Ariane de Rothschild, and that he connected another attorney at her firm with a client in a criminal case. 

Ruemmler, who later became Goldman Sachs’ top lawyer, said she was aware of Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea for solicitation of a minor for prostitution, but continued to work with him because he expressed “remorse, embarrassment, and regret for his conduct.” 

“I did not see any evidence of ongoing criminal conduct or misconduct of any kind by Mr. Epstein during the time I dealt with him. Second, if I had seen or heard any evidence suggesting that he was abusing women or girls, I would have immediately reported him to law enforcement,” she said, according to the transcript.

Summarizing their relationship, Ruemmler told lawmakers that she met with Epstein approximately 20 times between 2014 and 2019 — and that her final conversation with Epstein was when he called her after his arrest in July 2019. 

“It was a very short conversation, probably less than a minute. And, to the best of my recollection, the only thing that he said was that he’d been arrested. And my response was, ‘You obviously need to call your lawyer,'” she told the panel. 

Ruemmler said that she also attended Epstein’s subsequent criminal arraignment in Manhattan because she was “absolutely shocked that he had been arrested” and wanted to update de Rothschild about the case. 

“I had come to have a personal relationship with Ariane de Rothschild, and so I knew that she would want to know, like, what exactly was going on. And so the way to find out exactly what was going on is actually to be there in the courtroom,” she said. 

A Rothschild bank spokesperson told Reuters earlier this year that de Rothschild was a business acquaintance of Epstein from 2013 to 2019, that she had no knowledge of Epstein’s conduct, and that she “unequivocally condemns his behavior and the crimes which he committed.”

Ruemmler was pressed by lawmakers about her casual and friendly emails with Epstein, in which she referred to him as “Uncle Jeffrey” and compared him to a brother. 

“He was extremely arrogant. He was a mansplainer. He was pushy. He was avuncular,” Ruemmler said. “I, sort of, in a teasing way, referred to him, you know, as ‘Uncle Jeffrey,’ in a way to not be — to sort of call him out for the way that he could be quite patronizing.”

Asked about emails in which she seemingly joked about Epstein’s crimes — including referring to “Jeffrey’s type of massage” — Ruemmler acknowledged that in hindsight those messages appear insensitive. 

“I understand why, you know, sitting here in 2026, the emails can come across as if there is callousness to victims. That’s not what I intended at the time. It wasn’t my state of mind at the time,” she said when asked about an email where she wrote, “victim’s rights, my ass.” 

Ruemmler also acknowledged communicating with Epstein in 2015 about what she called “very extreme allegations” raised by Virginia Giuffre of being abused by Epstein and trafficked to other prominent men, including Britain’s Prince Andrew and other then-unnamed politicians and businessmen. Ruemmler told lawmakers that — in her view — Giuffre’s allegations lacked “the indicia of credibility that one would expect.”

“There were allegations that she made that were, I believed, based on my experience as a former prosecutor and as a defense counsel, that were of such a nature that they were — they lacked inherent credibility,” Ruemmler said.

Family members of Giuffre, who died by suicide last year, said in a statement Wednesday that Ruemmler “should be ashamed of herself” for “attempting to cast doubt on Virginia.”

“The only person who lacks credibility is Kathy Ruemmler, who is trying to get people to believe she didn’t know Jeffrey Epstein was actively engaged in sex trafficking,” said Sky and Amanda Roberts, Giufrre’s brother and sister-in-law, in the statement.

Toward the end of the Ruemmler’s appearance before the panel, she adopted a more aggressive approach and criticized lawmakers for scrutinizing her relationship with Epstein, the transcript indicated.

“In the American legal system we hold people accountable for their conduct. We don’t hold people accountable for their associations,” she said. 

Ruemmler also said that some of the lawmakers on the committee “publicly endorsed a candidate who has been credibly accused of sexual assault” — though she did not identify the candidate — to argue that lawmakers were being hypocritical. 

“And so if we start applying a standard that somehow a mere association with someone who has been accused or, you know, convicted of criminal conduct — I think that’s a very dangerous road to go down,” she said.